Something Different – Messing with Hot Wheels
I know nothing about cars. I don’t drive and I have never really understood the appeal. I know how to change a wheel and I know the physics of a four-stroke engine but beyond that? No idea. However, when my friend Tom asked me whether we could have a repaint and kitbash session to get some cars ready to play Gaslands Refuelled with his grandson I was thrilled. Suddenly, in my head, my painting desk was converted into a combination of a Fast and Furious montage and an episode of Pimp My Ride! So I went out and got myself a car and decided to set about it and see what was possible!
So I started off with this £1.69 Dodge Truck (I think). The key bits to me where the big flatbed area on the back and the bullbar on the front. That flatbed looked prime for something to be mounted on it, and the bullbar pretty much had to have something horrible tied to it.
Thinking about the paint job it became obvious that I would have to airbrush this to get a clean coat over it, and therefore I probably needed to get it apart, so I could do each bit. A quick look online tells me that I need to drill out the rivets underneath. I thought I could do it with my hand-drill but I needed more ooomph so I pulled out my cordless drill and set to it. Even then, it took a bit of effort and some brute force but I got the rivets off and the model split into four parts.
Having never taken one of these apart before, I was surprised that the plastic for the window was its own part. That was great. The wheel bit didn’t need any work, but the inner body part definitely did, and obviously the main chunk needed to be primed into something neutral.
I made a decision here to paint before I did the major conversions. Doing some dryfitting I realised I would be cutting and glueing things that might mean I couldn’t convert and then paint. So I had to do things ‘the wrong way around’
To the paint brush!
I’ll be honest, this was far more fun than it deserved to be as I felt like I was one of those spray painters working in the Nissan factory in Sunderland!
The main body got a fair few coats of Green Stuff World black surface primer to get that dense black finish.
The inner body got a few coats of a mix between the aforementioned primer and Darkstar Molten Metals Baroque.
I also gave the seats a quick once over with some Citadel Khorne Red, just for completionist sake.
And then two more steps in one!
I added some side and top stripes using copious amounts of tape and an airbrushing of Green Stuff World Colourshift Cobalt Blue. I have never really succeeded in this sort of technique until I got a tiny little roll of surgical tape about a year ago. It works perfectly, sticky enough to get a good straight line but not so stubborn that it pulls up the paint underneath.
I then cut away the wheel from the flatbed and did some trimming and cutting, to get one of my chosen pieces from my bits box into place. This is the rear end of the one half of a spare Necron cannon thing, I think, but it makes a pretty perfect techy bed for what’s to come!
Getting this in and stuck was a little fiddly, as it is quite snug but that also makes glueing it awkward, coming from the wrong angles. After a few goes I get it where I wanted it, secure.
And now for the fun stuff!
I grabbed a suitably sized skull from the Warhammer Skulls pack (seriously, if you like this sort of thing, its the gift that keeps on giving…) and mounted it on the bullbar, like some sort of mutant head shown off as a trophy.
The big ass gun on the back of the truck is a bolter from some Warhammer 40k terrain, maybe? I snipped off the two pipes at the back as they were going in the wrong direction and then realised that the entire thing was too low and the gun was pointing into the back of the drivers head. Well, that’s that sprues are for, so I made a little platform and fitted the gun to it, and then reattached one of the pipes at a different angle, so it worked and voila – every ammo-sexual’s wet dream – an imperial bolter on the back of a pick-up truck!
Finally, I added some armour plates onto the doors. I reckoned if there was going to be any extra protection in a game like this, it should be on the side of the driver!
I was tempted to add a few more skulls and some cogs I have, but decided that less is definitely more here.
Finally, I finished the paint job, giving the metal parts a covering of that Baroque metal and some Citadel Nuln Oil, and the skull got the Citadel Unshabti Bone and Serephim Sepia treatment.
I dabbed on some Citadel Leadbelcher with some sponge and then added some Plastic Builder Red Rust Weathering Wash. It might smell like death, but this stuff makes the best rust patches on models.
I tried some AK Interactive Streaking Grime on the wheel trims as they were just too golden, but it didn’t work so I just used the weathering wash and it did the job. It always does the job.
And there we have it – my first ever car conversion, and indeed the first time I have ever touched a toy car with intent. It was great fun, as an almost engineering project and I’m looking forward to seeing what else I can do!